I've had the worst of times - now for the BEST of times!

peaceandfreedom

Lilt, you are planning VERY far ahead and INOD is right, September at the earliest - so hush your C-word talk.

Hairdressers today, cost a small fortune. I keep thinking I should try somewhere else but I haven't got the courage. Maybe one day I will try a new hairdresser and a new haircut. I'm a cowardy-custard.

Have done a bit of shopping in the W@itrose half-price sale, I had some vouchers to use as well so I got a lot of stuff for a very small outlay. I have noticed though, from looking at YNAB, that my grocery spend is not improving much. Granted, I only started analysing it properly in December and that's a difficult month because of the extra Christmas food. Will persevere with the detailed logging and see if I can get the bill down.

Following my initial amazon trade-in success I am thinking of sending off another batch of books. I have also downloaded Marie Kondo's decluttering book to my Kindle and am very excited at the thought of putting her advice into practice. Have spent some time this evening eagerly folding plastic bags into 'samosas'.

It snowed here this morning but didn't hang around for very long. Tomorrow is looking fine and sunny so I might spend a few hours in the garden, there is tons to do.

liltdiddylilt

If you can't get it down by logging it all... maybe just set yourself a target of a lower spend and aim like heck for it. I do half and half. I hate it going in the red so I try really hard not to go over my low budget. And I plan my shops so hard there are no top up temptations... little things like that cut mine in half. Most of my bill was £20 when all I needed was milk!

Googling Marie Kondo xx

peaceandfreedom

liltdiddylilt wrote: »

If you can't get it down by logging it all... maybe just set yourself a target of a lower spend and aim like heck for it. I do half and half. I hate it going in the red so I try really hard not to go over my low budget. And I plan my shops so hard there are no top up temptations... little things like that cut mine in half. Most of my bill was £20 when all I needed was milk!

Yes, good thing to aim for a target. I have a max and always seem to reach it so perhaps I should lower my max a teensy bit at a time. I am also inclined to bulk buy things that are on offer - I used to have a special budget for this but stopped it. I think I will re-introduce it. Bulk buying things does save money in the long run but increases short-term bills.

I have done a fair bit of bulk-buying so far this month so hope that the overall bill will be less by the end of Feb, say. The hardest part of the bill to reduce is the butcher's because that is mostly OH's purchases - not necessarily just for him. I don't want to drone on to him about this because he is a big meat eater and that's fine. And it's our local butcher and excellent quality meat. I think it's best if I concentrate on the rest of the shopping, which is at least 75% of the total cost. Sort myself out, in other words . It will mean less stress all round.

liltdiddylilt wrote: »

Googling Marie Kondo xx

I've finished reading the book now . It's a new approach and some of her ideas are a bit batty but I've always liked a bit of battiness in people. Her primary ideas are:

• Concentrate on discarding things first, don't worry about where to store things yet. If you discard properly you will end up removing bags and bags of stuff from your house - probably 30 bags in the first go.
• Hold each thing in your hands and decide if you want to keep it or not based on whether or not it 'brings you joy'. You can interpret the 'brings you joy' bit any way you like.
• Sort things out in categories rather than locations - if you do it by location e.g. one drawer at a time, all you do is end up moving stuff from one place to another. Instead, get everything of one category together in one room and sort it all out in one fell swoop.
• Don't go buying lavish storage solutions - you probably already have more than enough storage. It's just that you've got way too much stuff.
• Be kind and loving to your possessions, even the ones you are about to take down to the tip. Thank them for their service to you.

Told you she was a bit batty but I can relate to this last point. I am always talking to my car, thanking her for getting me places safely and for giving me such reliable service over the years. I LOVE my car (even though it's very old and has over 115000 on the clock) and I make sure she knows it. I often pat the top of the roof or pat the dashboard and say 'Well done' (it seems I must be a bit batty too:rotfl:.) So why not do the same with other things?

She believes that possessions have an energy and they will serve you much better for being well looked after and well-loved. There is a lot of truth in this - we as a family have always been pretty good at looking after our possessions - we notice this because it's so apparent that so many of our relatives are not. Our stuff rarely breaks down or fails prematurely (except kettles ).

Her book makes absolutely no allowance for economy, so I will make my own decision on that. She says not to bulk buy as the storage costs outweighs the savings. Maybe that's the case if you live in a tiny Japanese flat but our house is plenty big enough to store bulk buys. Also, I have some clothes that are well past their best but I can't afford to replace them, so they'll do for another while. Make do and mend has to be my motto at the moment.

However, there are plenty of things I have hung onto for years 'just in case' I might wear it one day or 'because I want to ebay them' - have been wanting to do so for years. So I going to start my clear-out with my clothes and all other clothes that are lurking about. I will make an ebay/facebook selling pile and set a time limit - if not sold by the time limit, they are off to charity shops.

Gosh, I've rambled on for absolutely ages - however, no-one has to read it, it has helped me to write this down.

Have a lovely Sunday afternoon.

peaceandfreedom

Since I rambled on at length in my last post I thought I'd do a briefer one .

My plans for this afternoon are:

1. Tidy up the kitchen
2. Do some more laundry
3. Do a couple of hours in the garden
4. Sort out my knickers and socks drawers a-la KonMari
5. Sort out my stock of seeds and order new seeds

The birds are getting great use out of bird feeders these days - the one in the back garden used to be largely ignored but it's getting much more attention now. There was a gorgeous robin having a nice feed there earlier.

Laters.

in_need_of_direction

Do you know, it's only my underwear drawer that retains any kind of structure. I find though that it's a big help as you can pretty much work around other shortages or hiding items. My sister thinks it's hilarious as most other things are kinda haphazard.

patanne

How about trying this. Many years ago when I got my first freezer and had a little money to fill it but personally zero income, I filled the freezer using that money and then BOUGHT from the freezer from the housekeeping each time I used anything just a little more than it had cost to buy. This money was then used to top up the freezer again when needed. I did this for the next 10 years and would do it now if I needed to because it really worked for me.

peaceandfreedom

patanne wrote: »

How about trying this. Many years ago when I got my first freezer and had a little money to fill it but personally zero income, I filled the freezer using that money and then BOUGHT from the freezer from the housekeeping each time I used anything just a little more than it had cost to buy. This money was then used to top up the freezer again when needed. I did this for the next 10 years and would do it now if I needed to because it really worked for me.

Ooooh, what an interesting idea, Patanne .

I can see how it would work if you had very little money coming in. I have enough money coming in every payday to fund all our food and most other things, now that I have gained control over my budget, so I'm not sure this would help my particular situation. I would like to divert some of my food spending towards other things - an emergency fund and household contigency saving mainly. So rather than saving up for my next food spending, I need to reduce the overall spend.

I kind of know what I need to do - plan meals a week or so in advance so that all that 'extra shops' spending is reduced. And I need to start using up some of my stockpile of food - particularly the stuff in the freezer - rather than adding to it. The big freezer in particular needs to be defrosted and that can't happen while it's packed to the gunwales .

peaceandfreedom

in_need_of_direction wrote: »

Do you know, it's only my underwear drawer that retains any kind of structure. I find though that it's a big help as you can pretty much work around other shortages or hiding items. My sister thinks it's hilarious as most other things are kinda haphazard.

My underwear actually lives in three drawers and while they are reasonably organised, the socks and tights situation is not good. That defo needs an overhaul. The knickers drawer just needs re-arranging - last night I did actually go through it and discard some knickers that I never wear any more - thongs! :eek::D. I just need to properly the fold the ones that are left.

I've realised though that I am actually very organised in a lot of ways, I keep my kitchen stuff very tidy and know exactly where everything is (though that sometimes depends on the wild imagination of whoever has just emptied the dishwasher ). Everything is always put back immediately after use. So I am fairly organised, I just have waaaaaay too much clutter - particularly clothes and paperwork. Also the entire garage is a disaster but should be partly cleared when I do it by category.

patanne

so instead of paying into the housekeeping as I did, pay into whatever fund needs the money, whether it be savings or overpayment. It really just boils down to an attitude of mind and relates to what you are "spending" on food, perhaps more as a keeping track sort of thing.

peaceandfreedom

patanne wrote: »

so instead of paying into the housekeeping as I did, pay into whatever fund needs the money, whether it be savings or overpayment. It really just boils down to an attitude of mind and relates to what you are "spending" on food, perhaps more as a keeping track sort of thing.

I do keep track in great detailing using YNAB and if I move money whenever I used food already paid for, that would mean re-jigging YNAB every time.

But you are right, it's an attitude of mind - I've always liked good food and I always like a full larder and fridge. So do the rest of the family in fact . I am going to try to eat out of what we've got this week.